Category: 2017 Hackaday Prize

Alex Williams pulled off an incredible engineering project. He developed an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which uses a buoyancy engine rather than propellers as its propulsion mechanism and made the entire project Open Source and Open Hardware.

The design aims to make extended duration missions a possibility by using very little power to move the vessel. What’s as remarkable as the project itself is that Alex made a goal for himself to document the project to the level that it is fully reproducible. His success in both of these areas is what makes the Open Source Underwater Glider the perfect …read more http://pje.fyi/Q20Nvd

While medical facilities continue to improve worldwide, access to expensive treatments still eludes a vast amount of people. Especially when it comes to prosthetics, a lot of people won’t be able to afford something so personalized even though the need for assistive devices is extremely high. With that in mind, [Guillermo Herrera-Arcos] started working on ALICE, a robotic exoskeleton that is low-cost, easy to build, and as an added bonus, 100% Open Source.

ALICE’s creators envision that the exoskeleton will have applications in rehabilitation, human augmentation, and even gaming. Also, since it’s Open Source, it could also be used as …read more http://pje.fyi/Pf0XST

This year for the Hackaday Prize, we’re doing something very, very cool. We’re encouraging hardware entrepreneurs to come up with the next big electronic thing. We’re giving the Best Product in the Hackaday Prize $30,000, and an opportunity to work in a lab filled with tools to turn that prototype into a marketable reality.

Last week, we announced the twenty finalists of the Hackaday Prize Best Product competition. There’s still a lot of work these hackers and tinkerers need to do before the final judging round, but until then we can start taking a look at what are already some …read more http://pje.fyi/PdDlHX

Back in the old days, when handing someone a DB serial cable when they asked for a DE serial cable would get you killed, KVM switchers were a thing. These devices were simple boxes with a few VGA ports, a few PS/2 ports, and a button or dial that allowed your input (keyboard and mouse) and output (video) to be used with multiple computers. Early KVMs were really just a big ‘ol rotary switch with far, far too many poles. Do you remember that PS/2 wasn’t able to be hot plugged? The designers of these KVMs never knew that. …read more http://pje.fyi/Pd7GN3

Today, we’re excited to announce the winners of the Wheels, Wings, and Walkers portion of The Hackaday Prize. We were looking for the next generation of robots, drones, machines that make machines move, and hackers who now know far too much about inverse kinematics. The results were spectacular.

Hackaday is currently hosting the greatest hardware competition on Earth. We’re giving away thousands of dollars to hardware creators to build the next great thing. Last week, we wrapped up the third of five challenges. It was all about showing a design to Build Something That Matters. Hundreds entered and began …read more http://pje.fyi/PbtbK5

There are a few very popular irrigation systems entered into this year’s Hackaday Prize. In fact, last year’s winner for the Best Product portion of the Prize was the Vinduino, a soil moisture monitor for vineyards. Most of these irrigation systems use drip irrigation or are otherwise relatively small-scale. What if you need something a little more powerful? That’s where [Patrick]’s PTSprinkler comes in. It’s a massive lawn sprinkler coupled to a computer controlled pan and tilt mount. Think of it as a remote controlled Super Soaker, or the Internet of squirt guns. Either way, it’s a great entry for …read more http://pje.fyi/PZnwdv

Sometimes you run into a few problems when developing your own hardware, and to solve these problems you have to build your own tools. This is exactly how [KC Lee]’s USB Packet Snooper was created. It’s a small device that allows for capturing and analyzing Full Speed USB traffic to debug one of [KC]’s other Hackaday Prize entries.

[KC] is building an HID Multimedia Dial for this year’s Hackaday Prize. It’s kind of like the Microsoft Surface Dial or the ubiquitous Griffin PowerMate that has been on the market for the better part of two decades. This multimedia dial is …read more http://pje.fyi/PZQhtf